


Wander

by TalesOfOnyxBats



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Night Terrors, Siblings, Sleepwalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23740555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfOnyxBats/pseuds/TalesOfOnyxBats
Summary: After the final Agni Kai, Azula is prone to nigh terrors and sleepwalking. During an episode she makes her way into Zuko's room.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 117





	Wander

It replays itself in her mind, an unrelenting stage show depicting her downfall in the most merciless ways. On some nights she dies and on others she suffers. Sometimes Zuko boils her alive and she can feel each inch of her skin burning away. Sometimes he sends redirected lightning into her chest where it erupts and her very heart explodes as he and Katara sneer and laugh. Other times she drowns, Katara never melts her block of ice and the water fills her lungs. She hates this the most, it is a long and delayed way to die and Katara does it with pride while she does it with anxiety and dishonor. Rarely, but often enough for it to be noteworthy, she dreams of Katara holding water over her nose and mouth until she topples or of she and Zuko simply leaving her bound to the grate to starve out. She hates this nightmare more than the drowning dream. Because this one is longer; longer and she watches herself decay. Watches her body grow skinny and then impossibly gaunt. By dream logic she survives even when her skin begins to tighten over her skeleton. She lives until she is no more than just a skeleton, bunched up and forgotten. 

This is the vision that plagues her tonight.

That has her screaming and thrashing and eventually in tears. 

The palace is so vast and the walls are so thick that her cries go unheard. And if the guard personal do care, they haven’t bothered to check on her. They are well aware that her mind has fled. That she is, allegedly, prone to crying and shaking fits and so it is best to just leave her to it.

But she doesn’t want to be alone. 

She is so, so tired. 

The night after isn’t much better. This time her skin is burning away and when she springs up in bed, she can still feel the visages. A phantom fire that creeps over her arms. She wipes at her eyes. Her head is still cloudy with sleep as she hovers her legs over the side of the bed. 

She is only half awake when she lets her feet finally touch the floor. She wanders into the hallway, with no particular aim in mind, other than a vague sense that she doesn’t want to be in bed right now. 

A vague sense that she needs to be doing something else. 

She creeps into the kitchen and fixes herself a ludicrously early breakfast. But really she isn’t quite all there, not quite in the present, and what she fixes herself can hardly be called breakfast, more so it is a random collection of ingredients that go more or less with each other. Preparing a meal and finishing it takes only a half an hour and she is back to where she had begun--creeping around in the dark. 

Though, now, the sky is beginning to lighten from black to the very deep blue of the first stage of sunrise.

She drags herself away from the kitchen and down the hall. No matter how far or where she wanders within the palace, that ominous sense of foreboding left by her dream continues to haunt and stalk her.

**.oOo.**

Zuko jolts awake and jerks a second time when he spies the figure looming all too close to his bed. 

“Agni! Azula, what are you doing here!?” She simply stares at him with a sleepy blankness. He wonders if she is hearing him at all. “Hey,” he snaps twice in front of her face. She doesn’t seem to respond and he begins to register that she is sleepwalking. 

He wonders if this is a first time occurrence or if it has been a habit for a while now; one that has gone unnoticed due to the sheer size of the palace. She certainly hasn’t wandered into his room before tonight.

But she has picked up a habit of sleep talking so he can’t say that it is a stretch to find her sleepwalking too.

Her eyes, though open, are awfully distant and unseeing. Her head dips and he thinks that she might topple. Just in case he springs from the bed and holds her steady, though she still seems to be carrying her own weight. A few minutes pass and she doesn’t go slack so he moves his hands. 

He doesn’t know if he should wake her or not. So instead he puts a gentle arm on her back, between her shoulder blades, and tries to guide her back in the direction of her room. “Come on.” He coaxes softly, “let’s get you back to your room.” But he can only move her a few steps before she halts and seems to plant her feet to the floor. 

Zuko sighs. 

“Come on, Azula. It’s really early, you should be in bed.” 

“No.” She mumbles. She doesn’t face him though. She shakes her head, “no.” 

He isn’t even sure if she is talking to him at all. “Do you want to stay in here then?” 

She begins to wander away from him, towards the door. Whatever track or task she has decided on abruptly comes to a close when she stumbles upon the pile of clothes that he and his servants have neglected to clean. 

He doesn’t reach her on time and she lays in a heap on the floor. He cringes at the noisy thud her body makes. She lets out a rather sharp cry. He is thankful that he hadn’t approached her yet, for she reflexively punches flames out in front of her. 

Zuko can’t help but laugh a little, “you did this one to yourself, there’s no one to throw fire at unless you want to take it up with my laundry.” 

Azula shakes her head but the confusion doesn’t subside, he can see it in her eyes when she finally looks up at him. Her lower lip seems to tremble. Agni he hopes that she doesn’t cry again, he never knows how to handle that. 

He thinks that vulnerable Azula is almost worse than antagonizing Azula. At least he knows how to handle antagonizing Azula, at least he is used to her. 

**.oOo.**

She tries to collect herself. Tries to remember where she is at and how she has gotten here. She still isn’t entirely awake, only half so. “Zuko?” She mumbles. 

“Yeah?” He asks. “Do you want to go back to your own room?” 

She shakes her head. Right now, being in his insufferable company, is still much better than being in the company of her own aling mind. She likes this Zuko, the real Zuko, more than the one that tortures her in her dreamscape. 

“Then what do you want to do?” He asks. 

She leans herself against the bedpost. “I want to sleep.” She tries to be clear and consice but her words come out in a sleepy slur, something more akin to, “Iwannaslee.” She pauses. “But I can’t.” 

Zuko nods. “It’s a little hard to sleep sitting up don’t you think.” 

“It’s hard to sleep when you dream.” She thinks that she might be coming around, at least a little. 

**.oOo.**

He thinks that he is beginning to put two and two together. She had never been prone to night terrors as a child--no, that was him--but he knows what they look like and he is almost certain that she is having them now.

And while she may not have had night terrors as a child, she still had her share of vivid nightmares. He recalls letting her sleep in his bed with him and remembers her yanking the blankets from him in sleep. But her squishy and innocent sleeping face had made it worth it. 

He helps her to her feet and tucks her back in. He doesn’t know where he is going to sleep but she is already dozing off once more. 

“Maybe you’ll dream less in here.” He says more to himself than her. 

Resigned to having given up his bed, he clears a space on his desk and begins working on some of the contracts and forms he has been handed. 

He knows that she is sleeping once more when she begins her incoherent muttering. Little fragments of things that don’t quite make sense. But these things seem to draw happier coos and croons. 

**.oOo.**

Azula wakes feeling disorienting. It takes her a moment to gather that she is in Zuko’s bed and not her own. She heaves herself up and scans the room. She finds him sitting at his desk, hunched over and snoozing with his quill still grasped between his fingers. She thinks of leaving his room before he can wake, but she sees him lift his head.

The scroll falls from his face, but the ink remains on his cheek. She almost laughs, she would have laughed if she wasn’t feeling so exhausted and somber. He follows the line of her sight and rubs his cheek, only smearing the caligraphy. 

“Did you get any sleep?”

Azula nods, “I think so.” 

Zuko gives her a soft smile. “That’s good. If you need to stay in here again, you can.” 

Azula fixes her gaze on her hands which have come to clutch the blankets firmly. She still isn’t sure how to take or approach Zuko offering her support. Isn’t sure if she likes it or not. “I can’t even remember coming in here.” She admits, her voice sounds so small, even to her. 

“You were sleepwalking.” He chuckles. “I almost pissed myself when I saw you standing over my bed.” 

She manages a slight smile. “Glad I can still terrorize you when…”  _ I’m being terrorized _ ... “I’m asleep.” She leans back against the headrest. “Did I say anything to you?” 

“Not really. You just said no when I asked you if you’d go back to your own room.” 

“Oh.” She replies, taking a little relief in that she hasn’t babbled or cried about how afraid and anxious she is. Though it might to her well to talk about it. “Okay.” 

“You hungry?” He asks. 

She furrows her brows, “actually, not really.”

“Maybe you cooked yourself breakfast while you were wandering.” He jokes. 

She can’t say for certain that it is a joke at all. “I hope that it tasted good then.” The conversation finds its end and she doesn’t know how to or if she should start a new one. 

So instead they dwell in silence until Zuko finally says, “if you’re having trouble sleeping you can stay in here or I can stay in your room. At least until you can tell me why you’re having trouble sleeping.” 

Azula bites the inside of her cheek. “Alright.” 

“Alright, you want to stay here or alright, you’ll talk to me?” 

“Both, I guess.” Truly she yearns for relief, so desperately that she is finally willing to sacrifice at least some pride. She supposes that it wouldn’t hurt to tell him at least a little of her dreams. 

“Great!” He sounds much too chipper. But at least he isn’t mocking or snubbing her. “You can tell me a bit about it over breakfast?” 

“Sure.” Azula nods. 

At least now she has a decent start. 

At least now she has a chance. 


End file.
